Murder Mysteries Quotes

• I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.

  Agatha Christie

  Literature, Quiet, Introvert

  Agatha Christie (1971). “And Then There Were None”

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• Because there's nothing wrong with you... that can't be fixed.

  Libba Bray

  Fixed

  Libba Bray (2011). “Beauty Queens”, p.45, Scholastic Inc.

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• ...and then a murder mystery will occur.

  Natsuki Takaya

  Mystery, Murder

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• People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

  Denise Mina

  Reading, People, Fiction

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• You can approach 'The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death' in a variety or combination of ways: as a startlingly eccentric hobby; as a series of unresolved murder mysteries; as the manifestation of one woman's peculiar psychic life; as a lesson in forensics; as a metaphor for the fate of women; as a photographic study.

  Robert Gottlieb

  Fate, Psychics, Hobbies

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• The show [Shots Fired] is an autopsy of our criminal justice system, a space where the conversation surrounding the issues in our country is offering a seat at the table to all the voices to be heard, a murder mystery, and grassroots look at our own humanity as we move through the parts and pieces of the story.

  Aisha Hinds

  Country, Moving, Voice

  Source: www.theaquarian.com

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• A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.

  Gilbert N. Lewis

  Intuition, Littles, Fancy

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• San Francisco would be a good location for a murder mystery.

  Alfred Hitchcock

  San Francisco, Would Be, Location

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• I read murder mysteries. I exercise 40 minutes a day. I watch videotapes while I exercise. I listen to audiotapes when I am in my car. And I try to stay in three different centuries.

  Grover Norquist

  Exercise, Car, Trying

  "Grover Norquist: The Soul of the New Machine" by Michael Scherer, www.motherjones.com. January/February 2004.

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• Then, like a born and bred asshole, he added to the sheriff, "He writes murder mysteries.

  Josh Lanyon

  Writing, Mystery, Born

  Josh Lanyon (2002). “A Dangerous Thing”, Millivres Books

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• It has long been a source of wonder to me why the leading criminological writers--men like Edmund Lester Pearson, H. B. Irving, Filson Young, Canon Brookes, William Bolitho, and Harold Eaton--have not devoted more space to the Greene tragedy; for here, surely, is one of the outstanding murder mysteries of modern times--a case practically unique in the annals of latter-day crime.

  S. S. Van Dine

  Book, Unique, Men

  S.S. Van Dine (1956). “The Greene Murder Case”

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• I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, "Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax." And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.

  Paul Haggis

  Two, Relax, Valleys

  "Director Paul Haggis Talks THIRD PERSON, Putting the Cast Together, How He’d Like to Do an Extended Version, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. June 20, 2014.

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• Why are murder mysteries so popular? There's a 3-part "formula" (if you want to call it that) for a genre novel: (1) Someone the reader likes and relates to (2) overcomes increasingly difficult obstacles (3) to reach an important goal. The more important the goal, the stronger the novel. And the most important goal that any of us have is survival. That's why murder mysteries are more gripping than a story titled "Who Stole My TV Set.

  Lois Duncan

  Goal, Survival, Important

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• All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.

  Donna Leon

  School, Television, Ruth

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• As much as I adore Agatha Christie - and I think people make this claim about murder mysteries in general - it's often a very conservative mode of storytelling. Usually it's the greedy, climbing, new-money slimeball who wants to take from the aristocracy.

  Christopher Bollen

  Thinking, Climbing, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Disappointment, Loneliness, Book

  FaceBook post by Karen Marie Moning from Oct 27, 2014

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• Murder mysteries are puzzles that are fun to resolve.

  Kathy Reichs

  Fun, Mystery, Resolve

  "Face to face with death" by Liz Hoggard, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2006.

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• My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession.

  Christopher Bollen

  Mother, Dad, Book

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time.

  Christopher Bollen

  Book, Grandma, Sharks

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Paperbacks weren't considered real books in the book trade. Up till then it was just murder mysteries, potboilers, 25-cent pocket books sold in newsstands. When the New York publishers started publishing quality paperbacks, there was no place to buy them.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  New York, Real, Book

  "MENLO PARK / Read it and weep: Kepler's closes" by Alan Gathright, www.sfgate.com. September 01, 2005.

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• Curiosity, easily frightened, takes refuge in puzzles, murder mysteries, and spectator sports.

  Mason Cooley

  Sports, Curiosity, Mystery

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• They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.

  Walker Percy

  Suicide, Thinking, Opposites

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.84, Open Road Media

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• ... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Character, Nineteen, Necks

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• The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty is a farcical fictional meditation on female beauty structured as a mash-up of an old episode of Friends, a fairy tale and a murder mystery.

  Maureen Corrigan

  Mash Up, Meditation, Female

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• The Amazons is a stupendous achievement--a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn't put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course.

  Anne Fortier

  Book, Reading, Passion

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